ATF agents: Allowing guns into Mexico during Operation Fast and Furious was a ‘catastrophic disaster’

Three federal firearms agents told lawmakers Wednesday how their supervisors in Phoenix prevented them from breaking up Mexico-bound gun purchases in hopes of following the weapons trail to drug cartel higher-ups.

“What we have here is a colossal failure of leadership,’’ Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent Peter Forcelli told a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. “This was a catastrophic disaster.’’

The strategy of “gunwalking,’’ as the investigative technique is known, was at the heart of the ATF Phoenix office’s Operation Fast and Furious. It aimed at reeling in major gun-smuggling players who employ “straw’’ purchasers to buy high-powered weaponry at gun stores in Arizona, Texas and elsewhere in the Southwest.

But agents lost track of the guns as they were handed off from purchaser to middleman to trafficker. As a result of the up to 2,500 weapons that could have been intercepted were instead smuggled into Mexico.

Two of the guns, both AK-47s, were recovered at the site in Southern Arizona where smugglers killed Border Patrol agent Brian Terry last December.

“ATF is supposed to stop criminals from trafficking guns to Mexican drug cartels,’’ said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who appeared as a hearing witness. “Instead, ATF made it easier for alleged cartel middlemen to . . . buy hundreds and hundreds of weapons. Agents warned that inaction could lead to tragedy, but management didn’t want to listen.’’

The controversy over Operation Fast and Furious is a part of a proxy war over gun laws and gun control, as well as whether U.S.-purchased guns winding up in Mexico represent a significant problem.

Gun-rights advocates, many of them in Texas, argue that the Fast and Furious case shows that most, if not all, U.S. weapons purchases were within ATF’s power to prevent. Most weapons in Mexico come from Central America or are sold to traffickers by corrupt Mexican law enforcement, they claim.

Gun-control advocates, on the other hand, focus on the documented cases of weapons purchased in the U.S. that wind up in Mexico.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (AFP photo)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., issued a report Monday along with Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., which cited ATF data showing 70 percent of guns seized in Mexico in 2009 and 2010 were manufactured in the U.S. or imported into the U.S. The report called for re-enactment of Feinstein’s assault-weapons ban, which expired in 2004, and a requirement that gun dealers report multiple sales of military-type rifles.

At the hearing, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., called for a separate hearing to examine whether current gun laws are adequate to stem the Mexico-bound gun flow.

But the committee’s Republican majority, led by Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., focused on the ATF and its parent agency, the Department of Justice.

Issa released emails showing that ATF senior officials, including acting director Kenneth Melson, were intimately involved in monitoring Operation Fast and Furious in its early stages last year.

He also upbraided the lone Justice Department official at the hearing, Ronald Weich, telling him “you should be ashamed of yourself’’ for stonewalling the committee’s document requests about what Justice Department officials knew about the operation and when did they know it.

At another point, Issa hectored Weich on who at the Justice Department authorized the operation. “Do you know? Do you know?’’

Weich responded, “The answer is I do not know,’’ and that the Justice Department inspector general is investigating.

Robert Heyer, a cousin of the slain Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, said in emotionally charged testimony that if any government official “made a wrong decision,’’ they should “admit error and take responsibility.’’

The three ATF agents testified how at times they watched purchasers carry away loads of weapons and put them into traffickers’ cars only to have supervisors tell them to do nothing.

When agents protested, ATF agent John Dodson said, “We were told that we simply didn’t understand the plan.’’

A former N.Y. police detective, Forcelli said: “To walk a single gun is, in my opinion, an idiotic move.’’

Forcelli recalled watching his boss, Phoenix ATF special agent-in-charge William Newell, say “hell no’’ to a press conference question last March on whether the ATF had allowed guns to be smuggled to Mexico.